Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • On Declaring the Laws and Rights of Nature

  • Edited by Ellen Frankel Paul, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, Jeffrey Paul, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, Fred D. Miller, Jr, Bowling Green State University, Ohio
  • Book:
    Natural Rights Individualism and Progressivism in American Political Philosophy
    Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    27 August 2012, pp 104-138

  • Summary

    This chapter focuses on the core text generally recognized as the symbol of America's revolutionary mind and moral theory: the Declaration of Independence. It elucidates the common understanding held by most Americans about concepts such as the laws and rights of nature, while also recognizing those areas where they disagreed. Many eighteenth-century Anglo-American statesmen and jurists understood that the purpose of statutory law was to embody and reflect the law of nature. Following John Locke (1632-1704) and later Enlightenment philosophers, colonial Americans typically defined the law of nature as a dictate of right reason. America's Revolutionary Founders also used the doctrine of natural, unalienable rights in the decade after 1776 as the immovable foundation on which to anchor and permanently fix their constitutional structures. The chapter examines how Jefferson and his fellow Revolutionaries understood what a natural right is.